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OCTOBER, 1875.]
ON THE AGE AND COUNTRY OF BIDYÅPATI.
299
ON THE AGE AND COUNTRY OF BIDYAPATI.
BY JOHN BEAMES, B.C.S. It has been usual to speak of this poet as the vara," I and the pandits whom I consulted earliest writer of Bengal, and, as his language were led to suppose that the poet resided at is decidedly Hindi in type, the opinion has been Nadiya. The interpretation thus assigned to held by myself and others that the Bengali Gaura was supported by several consideralanguage had at that time not fully developed tions : itself out of Hindi.
1. Bidyâ pati's meeting with Chandi This view is very distasteful to Bengalis, who Das, who lived in the adjacent district of Birare proud of their language, and wish to vindi- bhům. cate for it an independent origin from some 2. The renown of Nadiy î as the birth local form of Prakrit. They have apparently place of Chaitanya, who, as we know from the set to work to search out the age and country Chaitanya-charitámrita, was fond of singing of Bidy a pnti, so as to show whether he Bidyâpati's poems. was really a Bengali or not.
3. The fact that Nadiya was the seat of a A very able article has appeared on this sub. celebrated family of râjas. ject in the last number of that excellent Bengali The cor "lusion as to the poet's country being magazine the Banga Darsana (No. 2, pt. IV. | Nadiya did not even then seem to us to harmon. for Jyoishtho 1282, say June 1875). It leaves ize with his language, and some of my Bengali something to be desired in the shape of clearer friends wished to explain it by the theory that indication of the authorities on which the state- the poet used the Braj Bhashî dialect as specially ments are founded, and there are some points appropriate to songs in praise of Krishna. To on which I still feel unsatisfied, but the main this theory there were, however, the objections conclusions are, I think, unassailable.
that Bid y apati's language, though Hindi, is I proceed to give the substance of the argu- clearly not Braj Bhasha, or anything like it, but ment, and the conclusions arrived at, with my Maithila, which is a very different thing; and own comments.
that prior to the restoration of the Krishna-cultus In an article on Bid yâ pati in the Indian at Brindaban by Rûpa and Sanktana, followers Antiquary, vol. II. p. 37, I described his lan- of Chaitanya, the Braj Bhâshi was not consiguage as "extremely Eastern Hindi," and on dered peculiarly appropriate to Krishna-hymns. p. 40 as "the vernacular of Upper Bengal." In Jaya deva, for instance, as well as Rúpa the same series of articles, at p. 7 of vol. II., and Sanatana themselves, used Sanskrit. I wrote of it as "more properly old Maithila To solve this question the writer in the Banga than Bengali." These three expressions are Darsana starts by observing that Bidyapati's three different ways of stating the same fact, contemporary Chandi Das writes Bengali, ani? and my opinion was arrived at from an examin- this explodes the theory that Bengali was in ation of the language rather than from histori- that age unformed, and closely resembling rustic cal or other considerations. Though I thus Hindi. After discussing this point, he goes on anticipated the writer in the Banga Darsana, to show, from the celebrated meeting of the two yet it is none the less gratifying to me to find poets, that Bidyâpati's home must have been in that the conclusion to which I was led by purely some place not very far from Birbhům, and he linguistic reasons has now been confirmed by has been led by this argument to seek for it in actual documentary evidence.
the nearest Hindi-speaking province : for if One point, however, I was wrong about, and Chandi Dás, being a Bengali, wrote Krishnamust now abandon. From the expression in hymns in his mother-tongue, it is a fair inference Padakalpataru, 1317, "påncha Gaures that Bidy a pati would also use his mother
he deserves. In the text I have not ventured to alter > single word or to touch the metre, whether faulty or not; and in my translations I have aimed chiefly at fidelity. However imperfectly I may have accomplished my task, I venture to hope that I shall not be charged with reshness.
since my acquaintance with Jellal-al-din Rumi is of more than twenty years' standing, and I flatter myself that I have. during that time, learnt to understand him a little. Nothing would please me more than to see better justice done to this poet than I can do.
